


Never Alone

by weakinteraction



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Action & Romance, Action/Adventure, Angst with a Happy Ending, Cunnilingus, F/F, Fingerfucking, First Time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:48:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27932566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weakinteraction/pseuds/weakinteraction
Summary: Zorii has come to Tatooine.  But soon an urgent mission will take her and Rey elsewhere.
Relationships: Zorii Bliss/Rey
Comments: 4
Kudos: 13
Collections: Star Wars Rare Pairs 2020





	Never Alone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [baar_ur](https://archiveofourown.org/users/baar_ur/gifts).



There's been a cantina in Mos Eisley since there's been a Mos Eisley; indeed, Rey could well believe that the cantina came first, and Mos Eisley grew around it. Certainly, it seems that very little about it has ever changed. Galactic governments can rise and fall, local crime lords come and go, people will still need a place to drink, to meet, and to do their entirely legitimate business. 

As always, the place falls completely silent when Rey walks in.

Everyone there knows exactly who she is -- or, at least, they think they do. Rey's heard some of the stories that circulate about her; there's truth in most of them, and some of what they _don't_ know would sound stranger than even the wildest rumours and distortions that have reached her ears.

A moment later, the conversations resume and the band begins playing again. She knows most of the people in the bar, by reputation at least; some of them still respond to any attempts on her part to make small talk by taking it as a cue to make a swift exit. She wonders exactly what it is the locals fear: some sort of summary Jedi justice? Or that she's turned to the Dark Side and is going to establish herself as the new power on Tatooine? She wonders exactly how many times she'll have to come in here before they realise that she doesn't mean them any harm. She hasn't even, much to the chagrin of some, interfered in the delicate balance of power between the various squabbling Hutts, fighting over exactly how to split an ever-decreasing take.

It's crowded enough that she doesn't notice the newcomer at first. It's only when she's sat at the bar, waiting for her decidedly non-alcoholic beverage, that she hears a distorted voice at her side. She turns and sees a maroon flight suit, as impeccably kept as ever, and a helmet the deep black visor of which is completely expressionless, even while its ornate golden shape speaks to a certain flair on the part of its owner.

"It really is you," Zorii Bliss says.

Rey turns, startled but delighted at seeing a familiar face -- well, helmet. There's a part of Rey that wants to give Zorii a hug, but she's not sure it would go down too well. She settles for saying, "It really is me," only realising after she's said it quite how wide the smile on her face is.

The bartender puts down Rey's glass.

"Come and have that with me," Zorii says, indicating a table hidden away in the back; she's obviously managed to seem sufficiently intimidating that no one attempted to steal it in the short time she was at the bar. Rey tries to ignore the stares as she follows Zorii back to it. Whatever interest people may or may not have had in Zorii has suddenly increased a hundredfold.

It's clear that Zorii's noticed the attention too. "You get this a lot?" she asks.

"I'm used to it," Rey says with a shrug. "But what are you doing here, Zorii?"

"Would you believe me if I said that Poe sent me here to check on his droid?"

"No, I wouldn't." Rey thinks for a moment. "Besides, this is the wrong place to come if you want to see BB-8."

"OK, then. What if Poe sent me to check on you?"

"I don't need checking on. Poe knows that." Rey narrows her eyes. "I don't think Poe sent you at all. I think you came here by yourself. For yourself."

She pauses, then asks "Are you still running spice?" just as Zorii says, "I'm not still running spice, if that's what you're thinking."

Rey smiles, put up her hands. "OK, OK, I believe you. So why are you here?"

"Maybe I'm just curious," Zorii says. "Maybe I just wanted to see if it's true, that the great hope of the galaxy is on some backward planet running a moisture farm."

"Hope isn't something that you should be trying to get from other people. But as to the moisture farm: come with me," Rey says, downing her drink in one. "And I'll show you."

* * *

Zorii doesn't so much follow Rey on her rented speeder as race her, even though she doesn't know where she's going. On the few occasions that Rey goes in a direction that she isn't expecting, Zorii drives her impellers close to the redline to catch back up again.

As they near the farm, Rey can't help but smile proudly at the transformation she's wrought in just a few short months. Her plantings are the only speck of colour against the sand for miles around, picked out in the contrasting light of the setting suns.

Zorii doesn't slow, though, and by the time Rey arrives, she's already parked up, taken off her helmet and begun looking round. Rey pauses for a moment, watching Zorii as she shakes her hair out of the helmet. There's an austere beauty to her features that wasn't quite what she'd have expected.

"You really are a moisture farmer," Zorii says in astonishment when Rey catches up to her. Her voice is normal now, but there's still something authoritative about it, as though Zorii doesn't know how not to be in control.

"I'm a moisture farmer," Rey says, smiling. She gestures behind her. "See, my first crop."

"On Kijimi, it isn't getting hold of water that's the problem, just keeping it liquid in the low--"

Zorii breaks off and Rey sees it in her eyes: the same sense of grief that she used to see in Leia's eyes when she spoke of Alderaan. Even decades later she, like Zorii just now, would still slip unthinkingly into the present tense.

There are many things Rey could say, but before she has the chance, Zorii pinches her lips together for a moment before saying, "Shouldn't you be ... I don't know, training the next generation of Jedi or something?"

"Do _you_ think I should be?" Zorii seems nonplussed by the question. "I'm genuinely asking. I don't feel like I've figured all of this out yet. Some of the things the Jedi Order used to do ... taking Force-sensitive children at such a young age ..."

Zorii catches on. "You think it doesn't sound too dissimilar to what the First Order used to do?"

"I know it's not the _same_." Rey knows that Kijimi was subject to their depredations, but doesn't want to reopen wounds inside wounds. She thinks of another example. "But when I think about Finn ..."

"But don't you think you would have been better off? If, instead of having to scratch a living on Jakku, you'd been with other people, people who taught you? People who _valued_ you?"

Rey thinks for a long while. Thinks about how true that sounds, knowing that Unkar Plutt didn't value _her_ at all, only the things she found. It wasn't all that different from the life of a First Order child recruit, after all. Was her talent for scavenging something that the Force had given her? What _would_ it have been like, if she had been trained from an early age? But then, she thinks of other things: of who her parents were, and why they had to hide her, and what would have happened if they had failed.

And then she thinks: What would it have been like, if the Final Order's first target had been Jakku, rather than Kijimi? And from there, another thought, one that does seem plausible compared to being a Jedi youngling, as she would have under the old ways: what would it have been like -- what would her whole life have been like -- if her parents had taken her to Kijimi? Both worlds were similarly far from the centres of galactic civilisation, recognising any central authority only grudgingly and partially. Would a Rey who had grown up on Kijimi have fallen in with Zorii's crew? It didn't seem impossible. Poe had, after all. And Han had been a smuggler and many other things besides, before he had become a General of the Resistance ... and after too.

Slowly, she becomes aware that Zorii's gaze is boring into her, waiting for an answer, not so much patient as inexorable. "I don't know," she says. For a moment, she feels as though she might be about to tell Zorii the secret that she's only imparted to a few: what the Emperor told her about her heritage. But in the end she says, "Everything worked out the way it did because it worked out the way it did. Pull at one thread and the whole tapestry unravels."

"So you genuinely think you're doing the right thing, just staying out here, _farming_?"

"Weren't you listening to anything I just said?" Rey laughs. "I have _no clue_ whether I am or not. But _something's_ led me here, even if it's just Master Luke's legacy. And every morning I meditate. When I just _let go_ , I can feel the Force, the way it connects ... everything. It's--" She stops, pausing for a moment to try to work out how to explain. Part of her wonders _why_ she feels the need to explain anything to this woman, but somehow she knows she does. "The first time it happened, when I was with Master Luke, I could feel the way it connected everything, but there was a ... tension. The whole galaxy pulling at itself. Now when I do it, it's ... I don't know how to describe it. But the tension's gone, ever since Exegol." She remembers how hard it was to form a connection to the Force, that very last time she'd trained with Leia. She'd thought that it was her failure as a student, but now she wonders if it was something to do with the Emperor's dark power waxing once more. She almost goes on, admits to Zorii that she's worried that she'll do something to bring the tension back, that perhaps the best thing for the galaxy really is for the last Jedi to content herself with farming, and leave it to its own devices to carry on. She's read in some of the less reliable texts that in the old times, Jedi initiates who didn't make it to the end of their training were sent to agricultural planets. Maybe the whole galaxy would have been better off if the whole order had done that long ago. Her daily meditation certainly doesn't seem to be doing her farm any harm.

"Well, I wouldn't know about that sort of thing," Zorii allows, grudgingly. "But there are some people who might think you're hiding." It was the sort of "some people" that clearly included the speaker. "Some people might think you had ... responsibilities."

"People know where to find me if they need me," Rey says. "You made it, after all."

"I never said I needed you," Zorii says. She looks away for a moment, then tries to turn it into gazing at BB-8, quietly locked into a charging port down by the counter. "And BB-8? He's perfectly happy helping out around the farm?"

BB-8 breaks away to wheel around Zorii clockwise, then anticlockwise, then clockwise again, blooping cheerily all the while.

Zorii kneels down. "You're a top of the line astromech droid, with more experience than any--"

BB-8 interrupts with a long series of whistles.

"Sure," Zorii says. "Apart from R2-D2. But here you are, maintaining vaporators. Are your motivators malfunctioning? I could take you to Babu Frik--"

BB-8 gives a long, low whistle; a definitive negative.

"Well, I won't tell him you put it exactly like _that_ ," Zorii says.

BB-8 makes a series of amused chirps, then rolls back into the charging station.

"It's not easy to find a droid as loyal as that who doesn't have a restraining bolt attached," Zorii says. "I'm impressed."

Rey doesn't say it, but she's impressed too, at the fact that Zorii sees things in those terms. She's always believed you can tell a lot about a person by the way they treat droids.

"I need to go and check on a couple of things up top," Rey says. "Make yourself at home."

Rey heads back out to the farm. There isn't really anything needing her attention -- she just likes to watch the suns set. And she needs a moment to try to puzzle out exactly what Zorii's presence here means. She hasn't been hiding, not exactly. But she's been enjoying things being simple. Zorii doesn't really fit into the category of "simple" at all.

When she heads back down by the light of the wall lanterns, Zorii seems to have disappeared.

The underground structure isn't huge, and it doesn't take long to find Zorii; she's made her way to the bedroom Rey hasn't been using. Or, at least, hasn't been using for sleeping.

Out on the bed are laid all the texts and artifacts she's been working on.

Zorii looks directly up at her when she comes in. "Just a moisture farmer, are you?"

"This is ..." Rey breaks off, unsure what she was about to say. Personal? Private? None of your business? But what Zorii said earlier wasn't wrong: Rey's business is the business of the whole galaxy, whether she likes it or not. "Master Kenobi lived here for many years, out in the hills. BB-8's been helping me to find some of the things he hid, things even Master Luke couldn't find when he came back here. It's been ... enlightening."

"But you still have a lot to figure out?"

"Master Yoda lived nearly a millennium," Rey says. "And he would be the first to say that he never figured everything out. I'm not ... waiting for some grand epiphany. This is just where the Force has led me."

"Right, and if you unpick ..." Zorii waves her hand, showing a lack of conviction.

"Why _did_ you come here, Zorii? To check on me?"

"In a manner of speaking," Zorii says. "When I heard you'd come here ... I wanted to make sure you knew you weren't alone."

"I do know that," Rey says.

"Do you? The thing is, I think you're wrong," and there's something in the way that Zorii says it that makes Rey feel uncomfortable; as though, forthright as she is, Zorii's scared to outright contradict Rey about anything, despite how much she's challenged her all night long. "I think other people is exactly where hope does come from. I don't know exactly what happened to you down there on Exegol -- I'm not sure I want to -- but I was there in the skies."

Rey thinks back, considering all of it. That moment when high above she had seen the arrival of the reinforcements Lando and Chewie had brought, Zorii and the others who had fled Kijimi among them, had made a difference. "Maybe you're right," she says.

"I think--" Zorii breaks off, and suddenly Rey isn't at all sure that she knows what's happening here. There's a sudden intensity to Zorii that Rey finds mirrored in herself, even though she had been unaware of it a moment ago. As though the space between them, small though it is, wants to collapse in on itself like a connection through hyperspace. Has Rey been misreading everything that's passed between them this evening? Or is she projecting a hope she didn't even know she had onto an oblivious bystander?

But before she can figure it out, Zorii puts her helmet back on and says, "I think I should go."

Rey watches her head back up to the surface, listens to the drone of the speeder getting quieter as Zorii returns to Mos Eisley.

Eventually, BB-8 turns his optical sensor towards her, noiselessly.

"I'm fine, BB-8," she says, in answer to the unasked question. "In fact, I think I should take my cue from you, and go recharge."

* * *

Sleep comes, though, only in fits and starts. Rey wakes several times from confused dreams.

In some of the dreams, planetary explosions feature heavily, and she can't tell on waking whether she'd seen a whole string of planets destroyed, or if there had been one planet and her dreaming brain had been unable to decide which it was, of all the worlds she had known, Kijimi or Jakku or Takodana ... or Tatooine. What if her presence here brought trouble? Was it really the right thing for her to have come here? She knows that her encounter with Zorii has left her doubting herself.

But then, in other dreams, there are explosions of an altogether different kind, explosions that detonate inside her, triggered by the press of flesh against flesh, Zorii's flesh -- that Rey's never in reality even seen, below the neckline -- held tight against her. And those dreams leave her feeling that her encounter with Zorii has left her more certain of what she wants than she's ever been before, while also certain that she's left the best opportunity that's ever come her way slip right through her fingers.

The last time she wakes up, though, she knows instantly and with absolutely certainty that what she's just seen wasn't a dream at all. Any thoughts of anything other than the desperate plight shown to her in the vision are pushed far to the back of her mind.

She's already getting ready, gathering up her lightsaber and blaster, when BB-8 rolls through the door, urgently bleeping that he has received a message.

"We're going back to Mos Eisley," Rey says.

BB-8 queries her lack of interest in the contents.

Rey gives him a grim look. "I don't need you to play it because I already know what it's going to say."

* * *

Rey takes the speeder through the pre-dawn light to the cantina, banking hard through every turn, churning great divots in the sand with the repulsorlift fields.

Zorii's sat at the same table that she was last night. Maybe she hasn't even been to sleep yet; Rey doesn't have time to worry about what that might mean.

"I wasn't expecting to see you again so soon."

"Nor was I," Rey says. "But I need a ship."

"Pretty sure you have a ship. A certain YT-1300 freighter of some repute?"

"I do."

"So ... what? Don't tell me, the hyperdrive is busted up."

"There's nothing wrong with the _Falcon_ ," Rey says. Apart from the port stabilisers, and the fact that you have to hit that one panel in the cockpit _just so_ to engage the hyperdrive, but that doesn't count as _busted up_. "It's the best ship in the galaxy, as far as I'm concerned. But, like you said, it's also one of the most well known."

"Last night you were telling me how happy you are being a moisture farmer, now you're going on covert missions."

"You can bring me back here when we're finished--"

"Hold up there. When _we're_ finished? I haven't even agreed to take you, now you're signing me up for some damn fool escapade too?"

"Zorii." Rey swallows. "It's Poe."

* * *

Space is tight in the Y-wing, especially with BB-8 tucked between her feet, the bombardier's control panel removed temporarily to make space for him. Zorii's droid, R4-A3, offered to yield his spot but BB-8 demurred, arguing -- not incorrectly -- that it was easier for him to fit in the cockpit than the other way round.

And yet, as cramped together as they are, Rey feels as though the distance between her and Zorii is as great as it's ever been. Zorii has been businesslike and efficient, but impossible to read behind the jet black of her helmet. Rey can't tell if it's just that she's, quite rightly, focused on saving Poe, or whether what Rey sees as a missed opportunity Zorii saw as the spurning of advances Rey had barely been conscious were being made. Or perhaps the whole thing really has been in Rey's head all along.

"Play the message again, BB-8," Zorii says.

BB-8 obliges. The holo of Finn's face erupts from his projector right in front of Rey, disconcertingly larger than life. "Rey, I wouldn't be bothering you if this wasn't important," he says, the same as he has done each of the dozen times they've played it. Finn looks off-camera for a moment, then returns his full attention to the recording. "It's Poe. You know we've been tracking the scattered remnants of the First Order, trying to make sure none of them make it out to somewhere even deeper in the Outer Rim to start again. Poe was following a lead on Ord Lerat when we lost contact with him. Rey." Another glance away. "We think it might not have been First Order after all. There was always a chance that some of the Exegol cultists were off-world, on some mission or other. Well, now we think that's who Poe found. We could really use your help on this one."

The holo flicks away. "So these cultists ... what are they, like, Jedi gone bad?"

"They don't have the same sort of connection to the Force as a Jedi," Rey says. "I'm sure I would have felt it, down there on Exegol, with so many of them. But they know ... the secrets of the Sith, I guess. Which I'm sure include ways to beat Jedi, even if you can't use the Force yourself."

"So what's the play?"

"We pick up Poe's trail," Rey says. "And see where it leads us."

"So basically you're asking me to trust that the Force will be with us," Zorii says.

Rey smiles. "I guess I am."

"That might work out for you," Zorii says. "I'm not so sure it does for us little people. Even Poe."

"Things will work out," Rey says.

"When that ship came out of hyperspace," she says, "everyone just thought it was another First Order patrol. It was only when it started to deploy the weapon that the energy signature made it clear what we were facing. Anyone who could get to a ship launched. I flew up there alongside members of the Crew and people who'd been our sworn enemies for years, and people I'd never met from halfway across the planet. I don't think they even registered our existence. They didn't launch any TIEs, but we weren't close enough to do anything to them anyway. All we could do was watch as the planet disintegrated, and then ... flee."

"I ... I didn't know," Rey says, inadequately. She reaches forward awkwardly to put her hand on Zorii's shoulder.

Zorii keeps both of her own hands on the controls, but she doesn't shrug Rey's hand away. "I'm not the sort of person who runs away," she says, "but it was the only option left right then. We jumped to an old Crew transit point. Some of the people at the rendezvous, I would have killed if I'd found them in possession of those co-ordinates the day before. And it was me who'd transmitted them. But none of that mattered any more. All our ancient, bone deep grudges, all our dreams for a better future, of it was just ... gone. There was only grief."

"But then, when Lando and--"

"Oh, yes, the signal from the _Falcon_ that rallied half the galaxy. We heard it, heeded it. We didn't want anywhere else to suffer the same fate. But we wanted revenge as well. So you tell me, was the Force with us that day, or not?"

Rey knows better than to try to answer, but she doesn't remove her hand, and Zorii still doesn't make her.

* * *

They emerge from hyperspace into busy orbital traffic above Ord Lerat; Zorii immediately has to hit the reverse thrusters to avoid a collision with a slow-moving bulk freighter. Manoeuvring quickly, she cuts into the line of ships the convoy is just one small part of; the comm lights up with what are undoubtedly angry messages from those around, but Zorii doesn't deign to listen to any of them.

Rey follows the line of ships, sees that it's heading for a large asteroid in orbit around the planet. She realises quickly that it's an orbital spaceport; what takes her longer to spot is the filament -- gossamer-thin from this far away, but in reality kilometres thick -- stretching from it down towards the planet.

"This place has a _space elevator_?" she says in wonder.

"You didn't know?" Zorii says, amusement in her voice.

"I never imagined I'd ever see one for real," Rey says.

"Little wonder," Zorii replies. "There's only a few of them out there. They're monstrously impractical. A vanity project for a planetary government in better times, and then once it's there you've got to maintain it forever, or half a continent's going to get smashed when it fails. You don't just remove the need for in-atmosphere flight, you _have_ to ban it, or anyone with a grudge will be targeting the elevator. Places like this have the sort of orbital defence grid you normally only find in the Core worlds, costs ten times as much to maintain as the elevator itself."

BB-8 bloops in agreement, reeling off detailed calculations about shear stress, gravitational perturbations and a hundred other factors.

One of the messages on the comm isn't going away. Zorii eventually thumbs the control; predictably enough, it's an insistent message from traffic control. "Unidentified Y-wing spacecraft, this is Varak Station traffic control. Identify yourself _immediately_." Rey has the sense that there was a "please" in there the first few times that's now long gone.

Zorii gives fake details, but they match the fake codes that they switched over to while they were in hyperspace.

"You're cleared for docking," the voice says, grudgingly. "Please proceed to Bay 47; it's the only small vessel docking area with any space remaining."

"Roger that," Zorii says.

Bay 47 turns out to be a huge cavern, at least twice as big by volume as even the docking bay on a Super Star Destroyer, but, as a natural formation, full of nooks and crannies.

They follow the navigational directions into what appears to be a dead-end, but there's an opening just wide enough to squeeze the Y-wing through, and Zorii takes them through it into an even larger cavern.

Rey gasps at the sight of the variety of ships. Even on Jakku, she never saw this many in the same place at the same time, certainly not all in working order.

BB-8 bleeps, excited and mournful at the same time, as they crawl past Poe's X-wing, nestled in a small rock formation, attached to docking clamps.

"It's a good sign, BB-8," Rey says. "We're on the right track." She doesn't say what she's thinking: that if they _don't_ find Poe planetside, it means he didn't leave here of his own free will.

Zorii eventually finds their designated landing spot and parks the Y-wing. Getting all of them out is awkward, Rey has to pass BB-8 to Zorii before she can get out herself. BB-8 allows them to do it, but Rey knows he'd prefer to be operating under his own power. As soon as he's down on the ground again, he speeds off, looking for a port to interface with and start hunting for clues. The automated systems remove R4-A3 droid, who reluctantly agrees to be recharged. He'd much rather help too, it seems, but they have to maintain their cover.

Rey realises that in all the confusion, Zorii's glove had fallen into the cockpit, below the controls. She reaches back in and grabs it, passing it to Rey. As Zorii takes it, her fingers brush against Rey's own, just for a moment.

Zorii's skin is soft to Rey's touch. She hadn't expected that but it made perfect sense: on an iceworld like Kijimi, you had to keep yourself protected. And Zorii seems to stay inside her flight suit almost all of the time anyway. Rey finds herself wondering if she even sleeps in it.

"Is that ... the Force?" Zorii said.

Rey doesn't let go of her hand. "Whatever you were feeling was all you."

"I'm not sure I believe that." At Rey's look, she goes on, "It might not have been the Force, but there was definitely something to do with you involved."

Rey blushes and looks away.

BB-8 comes back over and tells them that he's "secured" tickets for the very next elevator capsule ride down to the surface.

Zorii is all business again, immediately; the moment has passed. But this time, Rey's sure that it was a moment, and there's a giddy feeling inside her at the fact.

"Take us to the elevator," Rey tells BB-8.

* * *

Inside the capsule, though, there's nothing to do for the nearly two hour ride to the surface. Ten minutes in, BB-8 declares that he ought to conserve power and shuts down once Rey has promised to reactivate him when they arrive.

For a while, she and Zorii talk strategy, but there are so many unknowns about what they'll face in attempting to find Poe that it's almost pointless.

It's not too much longer before they surrender to the urgency that's been building inside both of them. Rey can feel it, like a spring coiling itself up, the two of them at either end of it, being drawn closer together. A part of her feels guilty at taking advantage of this enforced pause in their mission, but another part knows that their shared concern for Poe is part of what's driving the intensity of their feelings.

They're getting closer and closer, and then, inevitably and yet somehow without warning, they're kissing, and it feels to Rey as though something inside her is exploding and imploding at the same time. Zorii begins to pull at Rey's clothes, quickly gaining access to her breasts and leaning down to kiss them. 

As she in return pulls frantically at Zorii's garments, all the while still kissing her neck, Rey takes herself by surprise. When she's thought before about what this moment might be like, she expected to be hesitant, unsure of herself given her lack of experience, but instead she's desperate to explore Zorii's body, feel more of that soft skin, explore the different textures of it. Perhaps it's Zorii's own obvious enthusiasm for what she's doing that makes the difference, or perhaps this was always inside her all along, just waiting to be unleashed.

In the end, Zorii has to help Rey, her flight suit is so tight on her. Soon enough, though, she's wriggled out of it and they're both naked, Zorii lying on the floor with Rey above her. Rey explores her greedily, hands running all over her body: her firm breasts, the taut muscles of her abdomen, and further below too. Rey begins to work Zorii's clit in the same way that she does her own when she needs a release, quick back-and-forth motions that soon enough have Zorii groaning. Seized by an impulse, Rey disengages from their kiss and lowers her head to Zorii's breasts, kissing first one nipple then the other.

Rey continues to stroke Zorii, but the returns seem to be diminishing. "Rey," Zorii says. " _Slow down._ "

Rey pauses, considering this, and Zorii says, "I didn't say stop altogether." Rey readjusts her position so that she's lying next to Zorii, one knee in between her legs. She brushes Zorii's hair away from her face to kiss her again, and begins stroking her more slowly, taking the time now, exploring her fully, not just focusing on the tiny, perfectly-formed hardness of her clit. Zorii lets out an appreciative moan, and Rey begins to wonder what she's been missing out on all this time when taking care of things for herself.

After what seems like an eternity in which the whole of reality has collapsed to her awareness of Zorii -- the warmth of her body pressed up against Rey's, the softness of her lips against Rey's lips, the growing wetness of her pussy under Rey's hand -- Zorii says, "You can slide it inside me, if you want."

Rey needs no further encouragement, taking her middle finger and adjusting the angle of her hand so that instead it is inside her. The feeling is completely different, and Rey gasps when Zorii grips her finger tightly. "More," Zorii says, her breath coming in shallow gasps. Rey smiles in delight at the effect that she is having, and proceeds to push her finger further inside, exploring the subtle differences in texture as she goes deeper in. "I meant more fingers," Zorii says. Rey feels her eyes go wide, but she obliges, twisting her hand round slightly so that her index finger can slide inside too. Together, they are able to reach up and find a small, ever-so-slightly-rougher patch that, when Rey pumps against it, makes Zorii bite her lip.

"Let me try something," Rey says. Without removing her right hand from Zorii's cunt, she twists around so that her left, instead of being trapped between the two of them, can slide down to find Zorii's clit. The position is a little awkward, but worth it for the effect it has on Zorii.

"Oh fuck," she half-says, half-shouts. "Don't stop."

Rey doesn't, sliding back and forth inside Zorii at the same time as circling her clit with her other hand. When a particularly violent movement on Zorii's part pushes Rey's hand out for just a moment, Rey barely even notices that when she puts it back in, this time it's three fingers she's using. Zorii certainly does, though, practically screaming, "Yes!"

Rey carries on, feeling Zorii's mounting excitement. "You know I told you to slow down?" Zorii says. Rey nods. "Now go faster."

Rey grins, needing no further encouragement. She reverts to the sort of frantic motions that she's always used on herself, and with her hand begins pumping in and out urgently. After only a little while, her efforts are rewarded with an almighty groan from Zorii and the feeling of her hand being squeezed tightly.

As she comes down from her orgasm, Zorii grabs Rey's head with both hands and pulls it in for a deep kiss. "That was incredible," she says. "But ..."

"What?"

Zorii seems as though she might be about to fall asleep, but she stirs herself and says, "Now it's your turn. Lie back."

Rey does, wondering what Zorii is going to do in return.

Zorii reaches her own hand to Rey's pussy. "You're so wet," she says.

"I hadn't even noticed," Rey says, and it's the truth. She'd been so focused on Zorii that the effect that everything they were doing was having on her had been entirely secondary.

"I want to taste you," Zorii says, and, leaving only a moment for Rey to demur -- which she definitely doesn't want to -- she kisses her way down Rey's body, zigzagging across both her breasts before making a straight trail down to her cunt.

The moment when Zorii's mouth makes contact with Rey's clit is like nothing Rey has ever experienced before. It's as though the whole of her body is connected to the tip of Zorii's tongue, every tiny movement it makes magnified so that it makes her fingers and toes tingle, her lips moisten, and her nipples get harder still. It's nothing like her connection to the Force, but it _is_ a connection, a connection to Zorii that she doesn't want to let go of.

Zorii carries on, making slow, languorous circles around Rey's clit with her tongue, at the same time resting her hands on Rey's thighs. Rey takes the hint and spreads them further apart, allowing Zorii better access, and she begins to lick Rey in wider and wider strokes, teasingly, until finally she slides her tongue inside Rey's cunt. Then, agonisingly, she stops and pulls her head back, but it's only to say, "You taste even better than I expected," before diving back in.

Rey arches her back, pushing her mound towards Zorii, and Zorii continues to lick eagerly. Taking Rey by surprise, she grabs Rey's hands and places them on her head. Unsure what she should do, Rey rests them there. Zorii leans back slightly to begin making more of the same teasing motions that she had a little earlier, until Rey, in frustration, tangles her fingers into Zorii's hair and pulls her in again. The moan that escapes Zorii as she intensifies the speed and firmness of the strokes of her tongue suggests that that was exactly what she wanted Rey to do.

Rey loses track of time; she could stay like this forever, as far as she's concerned, riding the rising wave of the feeling inside her. But eventually, the wave crests and breaks, and now she's holding tighter still to Zorii's head as she comes.

Eventually, she releases her grip on Zorii, and she makes her way back up, so that they can hold onto each other.

"I would never have imagined ..." Rey begins.

"It could be that way?" Zorii says with a smile. "You're welcome, I guess."

"No," Rey says. "I would never have imagined it would be with _you_. Not until last night, anyway."

Zorii smiles in a way that fills Rey with relief that she hadn't been imagining things then, as if any further proof were needed. "Why wouldn't you imagine that?" she asks.

"Well, let's see. The first time we met I slammed you to the floor."

" _And_ held a lightsaber centimetres from my face." Zorii's breathing is coming a little quicker as she speaks, and Rey wonders exactly what that means. "And despite all that, I said that I thought you were all right." Zorii smiles, a smile with a hint of cunning and deviousness to it. "There's not many people out there who can get the better of me so easily. It was ... intriguing."

"Oh," Rey says. "Is _that_ why you came to find me?"

"I told you, I was ... checking on you."

"Given what we've just done, I reserve the right to find that an inadequate explanation."

"When I heard where you'd gone, after Exegol ..." Zorii looks at Rey earnestly. "I was worried, that you were alone."

"Is that all?" Rey says.

"Poe and the others might have been content to let you do whatever you wanted, but it seems to me it might be dangerous for someone like you to be alone. You need to be grounded. When you're alone, that's when the Dark Side wins."

Rey almost says that's the exact opposite of the old Jedi teachings, but thinks better of it. She's never really found that part particularly convincing, anyway. Zorii's version seems more likely.

But Zorii hasn't finished yet. "And maybe ... maybe after Kijimi, I thought it was dangerous for me to be alone, too."

"You're not alone," Rey tells her. "You never were."

* * *

Eventually, the capsule makes it to the surface and they emerge from it into a heaving reception hall, filled with kiosks and stalls for a hundred different purposes. Rey feels conspicuous, as though anyone who looked would be able to tell that her clothes had been hastily pulled back on, and her hair only partially straightened from its dishevelled state. Zorii, however, seems immaculate, back in her flight suit and helmet.

BB-8 wheels away, immediately looking for a port he can hack into to try to extract more information. Rey and Zorii, meanwhile, begin showing a holo of Poe to anyone who'll stop long enough to look at it.

After a while, though, it becomes clear that the task is hopeless: this place is so big, so busy, that the odds of finding anyone who even saw Poe, let alone knows what happened to him, feel minuscule. A Twi'lek merchant strings them along for a while, saying that he thinks he might have seen a human matching the picture; Zorii's even on the verge of giving him a few credits to "help" him remember when Rey uses the Force to get him to tell them everything he knows -- which turns out to be nothing.

"You do that a lot?"

"I wouldn't say 'a lot'," Rey says. "But sometimes it is very helpful."

"You do that to me?"

"If I did, you wouldn't remember asking that," Rey says.

Zorii thinks about this for a moment, then nods, but slowly, seemingly not completely convinced.

Rey's spared further awkward conversation on the topic by the return of an agitated BB-8. He explains that he's found surveillance footage of a brief altercation a couple of days ago. Sure enough, when he plays the holo, it's Poe, locked in some sort of hand-to-hand struggle with a cloaked figure. Poe's holding his own, then suddenly goes limp, and the figure then takes him away, seemingly pretending to those around him -- those who care enough to query it, anyway -- that Poe is a friend who's become a little the worse for wear and just needs to sleep things off.

"Where did they go?" Zorii asks.

BB-8's answer is a track on a map, leading far from the space elevator out into the desert. The track taken by a speeder that BB-8 estimates has a greater than 90% probability of having had Poe on board.

* * *

The desert stretches out for kilometre after kilometre. Their rented speeder feels insignificant against its vastness, their movement relative to the long, thin shadow of the space elevator the only real visible sign of progress.

Neither of them says anything for a long while. Zorii's arms are tight around Rey's belly as she drives, but that could be entirely practical. Rey begins to wonder if she regrets what they did on the way down.

"Was it like this on Jakku?" Zorii asks eventually.

"Not really," Rey says. "There was far more out in the desert than here--" even on Tatooine, it feels wrong that the sand is just _there_ , no wrecks and hulks jutting from it, revealed and then hidden again over time by the shifting dunes "--and far less going on in the settlements." The spaceport was one of the busiest places she's ever been.

It isn't really a discussion of what happened in the elevator, but it's enough for Rey, for now. She almost asks something about Kijimi, but holds herself back -- Zorii's already shown that she can talk about it if and when she wants to. It's still too soon for Rey to bring it up unprompted; in some ways it always will be.

They head on, deeper into the desert.

* * *

Eventually, BB-8's trail runs out, though even BB-8 doesn't know whether that's because the data is inadequate this far away from the main centres of population, or it really represents a final destination, somewhere they might still find Poe.

It does correspond, however, with a large rocky outcrop that emerges from the desert sands. There was nothing as big as this on Jakku, at least nowhere near Niima Outpost. Rey parks the speeder and they dismount, scouring desperately for clues.

Rey can see a way up the side of the rock, though whether it's entirely natural or a path worn down by occasional visitors -- who might or might not include Poe's abductor -- is hard to be sure. It's their best lead either way, so she begins to climb, Zorii following along. BB-8 has no hope of coming with them; Rey tells him to stay close to the speeder, make sure it's ready to depart at a moment's notice.

As they ascend, Rey begins to feel a deep sense of foreboding. Rey can feel the strength of the Dark Side here: it's the feeling of Snoke's throne room on the _Supremacy_ , the ruins of the Death Star on the moon of Endor, the entire planet of Exegol.

Eventually, they emerge onto a small plateau. The rock continues high above them, but built into the rockface is a small doorway. All around it, twisted runes are inscribed -- Rey recognises them as the sigils of the secret Sith language, and although she has no hope of knowing what they say, the overall intent is clear.

Rey's sense of the power of the Dark Side intensifies just looking at them. But she knows that she's felt that feeling elsewhere: in the cavern on Ahch-To beneath Master Luke's island, where she embraced the knowledge of herself.

Powerful light, powerful dark. But the converse applies: powerful dark, powerful light. Somewhere here are the resources Rey will need to prevail.

It's then that Rey notices that Zorii is shivering beside her, despite the heat of the desert afternoon; she isn't Force-sensitive, but she's sensitive to _this_ place; any sentient would be. Rey reaches out to hold her hand. "Is that supposed to make me feel better?" she asks.

"No, it's supposed to help me stay grounded."

"No pressure, then."

Suddenly, a blaster bolt fizzes across the stones in front of them. Zorii instantly lets go of Rey's hand and swings round into a crouch, pulling her blaster at the same time. Rey ignites her lightsaber, so that it can help her to deflect any that are better targeted.

Another shot flies towards them; Rey deflects it with a wave of the hand and it diverts up and to the right, sailing just above Zorii's head before striking the stone edifice just to the side of the rune-encrusted doorway.

"Thanks," Zorii says, the short word filled with feeling even through the distortion of her helmet. Given how many brushes with death she must have had, she's clearly spooked.

"Actually," Rey says, looking around, "I think it was going to miss anyway."

"So you were just showing off then?"

"No, it was ... instinctive." Her mind is working overdrive, trying to work out the angles, both literal and figurative. If it's just a case of terrible aim, it would hardly be the first time. Something feels off to her, though -- then again, that could just be the uneasy presence of the temple in her mind. "I think ..." And then, before she's really thought about it, or even knows what she thinks, she's stowed her lightsaber and is taking a run up to leap higher onto the rockface at the side of the entrance, suddenly _knowing_ exactly where the shots are coming from.

Steadying her windmilling arms in midair to pull out her lightsaber, she lands on a small plateau, hidden behind a small rock formation. She looks this way and that, searching keenly for the sniper, whoever it may be.

"OK, OK, you got me." An all-too-familiar figure emerges from a crevice in the rock with one hand up, the other lowering an unusual looking blaster rifle.

Rey glares. "Poe?"

"Nice to see you too, Rey."

" _You_ were shooting at us?"

"Well, I had to get your attention somehow!"

Rey is exasperated. "You didn't think of shouting?"

"Well, I'm shouting now, aren't I?"

"Rey!" It's Zorii down below on the plateau. "What's going on?" Even further down, back at the speeder, she can see that BB-8 is agitated, though she can't hear him from all the way up here.

"It's Poe," Rey shouts back. "He ... escaped by himself, I guess?"

Poe nods, looking smug. "I'd still be very grateful of a ride back, though."

"You _escaped_?" Zorii shouts.

"It's generally considered a good idea when you've been captured by a Sith cultist," Poe yells. "It was a whole big adventure. I've been hiding out on this ridge for a while now, trying to figure out how to get back."

"So us coming for you wasn't a _complete_ waste of time?" Zorii asks.

But then, suddenly, there's a figure standing behind Zorii -- the same cloaked figure in BB-8's recording, suddenly revealing himself from some sort of personal stealth field. Rey and Poe both shout "Zor--" at the same time, but the cultist grabs her instantly with one gloved hand, then holds up the other in their direction.

Then he speaks, his rasping voice carrying in echoes around the rock despite it barely being above a whisper.

"Not a waste of time at all," he says. "It was necessary. It was _foretold_. The last hope of the Sith is here."

And then, even as Zorii struggles uselessly, he drags her into the passageway carved into the rock.

"That's the guy?" Rey says to Poe.

"That's the guy," Poe confirms.

"I'm going after her," Rey tells Poe, then leaps back down, going instantly from a crouched landing into a sprint towards the rockface.

"I'll still be ... stuck here, then, I guess," Poe says.

"I'll be back!" Rey shouts as she heads into the darkness.

* * *

The passageway leads deep down, gently curving on its way in a long, slow spiral. Rey ignites her lightsaber so as to be able to see by its bronze light, and a pack of mynocks flee from its brightness.

Ahead of her, somewhere around what's effectively a neverending corner, she can hear Zorii's continued attempts to escape and the rasping laughter of the cultist in response to them.

Eventually, the passageway begins to broaden out, and the walls begin to drip with water. Rey realises that she must be deep beneath Ord Lerat's surface. The carved tunnel in the outcrop gives way to a more natural cavern formation. Unfortunately, that comes with a multiplicity of possible paths that Zorii could have been taken down.

"Zorii?" Rey shouts out, hoping to hear a response.

"Oh, she's quite safe, I assure you." The same rasping whisper as before, echoing off the walls so it's impossible to know exactly where it's coming from.

"Why have you taken her?" Rey asks, turning from one passageway to another in turn in rapid succession, trying to pinpoint the source. "It's me you want."

"Indeed it is," the voice goes on. "But not in the way you think."

And then he's coming out of the passageway immediately behind Rey, the carved one she just emerged from. There must have been a hidden entrance concealed somewhere in there. In each hand, he holds a weapon Rey has never seen before: twin discs mounted on either side of a short staff, which crackle with ionic energy.

Rey lunges forward, ready to try to disarm him. But at the last moment, he whirls away, leaving Rey's lightsaber scorching a line across the floor of the cave. By the time she's pulled it back up, he's activated the discs and they're projecting their ionic energy around themselves in wide circles: a personal shield when he holds it close, but a dangerous cutting blade when he lurches forward with them.

Rey parries with her lightsaber, but finds that its blade gets tangled between the circular fields. The energy being channelled through them must be immense; she wonders for a moment exactly what the power source is. It wouldn't be beyond belief that the Exegol cultists might have kyber crystals of their own.

The time it takes her to extract her blade is enough for him to dodge away. They fight on, sparring back and forth. On open ground, Rey knows that she'd be able to overwhelm him, but the tight confines of the cave system make life difficult. She fights desperately, driven by the knowledge that every second wasted in the effort to defeat him is another second longer before she can start searching for Zorii. With each swing of her lightsaber, she becomes more and more driven to simply finish it. Finish him.

And then, the cultist does something completely unexpected. He drops his weapon and kneels down in front of Rey, abasing himself. He leans forward on his knees to prostrate himself before her, arms spread wide on the ground.

Suddenly, the buzzing of her lightsaber is the only sound, and it seems to fill Rey's world. She steadies herself, tries to feel something, anything beyond, but all she can manage is an awareness of her own blood, pumping hard around her body.

The cultist waits. With one swing of her blade, she could kill him. With one swing of her blade, she _would_ have killed him, moments ago. But that was in the heat of battle, this ... this is something else.

"Do it," he croaks. "Kill me, and I will die in the knowledge that I will have fulfilled my purpose a thousandfold. The Sith will be reborn ... in you. You are our last hope."

Still Rey hesitates. He deserves to die, she thinks. For what he did to Poe, what he would do to Zorii. For whatever part he played in the Emperor's schemes.

Then again, if she takes him back alive, as a prisoner ... perhaps, eventually, he could be made to talk. The further machinations of the cult could be pulled apart before they really had time to get off the ground. She thinks of Finn, reacting with pleasure and pride to such an intelligence coup.

But she knows that's a lie that she's telling herself, an excuse she's inventing. If she is to spare him, it should be because she is being _merciful_. Just as if she does not spare him, it will be a cruelty, intended or not. He has weapons -- and, yes, techniques -- but she has the Force. Whatever happens here is entirely in her control, and was long before he knelt down and begged for death.

She remembers the vision she had aboard the Death Star: herself, wielding a fiendish red lightsaber, her very features twisted by the Dark Side. In this moment, it feels like the vision could come true.

In this moment, she knows that part of her _wants_ it to come true.

Her memory shifts, to Exegol, and the great ritual arena where the final confrontation took place. Thousands upon thousands like him, all waiting to do the bidding of their Dark Lord. It could have been her.

Two blaster bolts ring out in quick succession. Their aim is true and they slam into the back of the cultist, sending him lurching forward onto the dusty floor.

Rey deactivates her lightsaber as Zorii steps out of the shadows. Relief floods through her: relief that Zorii's all right, yes, but relief too at not having to make the decision for herself.

Zorii steps over the cultist's body and pulls Rey towards her. The simple hug is enough to bring tears to Rey's eyes.

She blinks furiously, regaining control. "I don't know what I'd have done, if I had been alone," she admits.

"But you never were alone," Zorii tells her.

* * *

It turns out that the easiest way to get Poe down from his hiding place is for Rey to build him a staircase out of rocks moved using the Force. He makes the inevitable joke; Rey ignores it, even as she hears Master Luke's voice in her memory saying much the same thing.

Eventually, they make it back down to the desert floor, and Poe's reunion with BB-8 is something to behold, although with a bittersweet tinge when Poe says, "RX-7 didn't make it, buddy."

On the journey back, while Poe is enjoying himself perhaps a little too much at the controls of the speeder, BB-8 explains that Poe will need a replacement astromech for his X-wing.

"Then I wish you well on your travels," Rey tells him. "I'm sure I'll see you again before too long."

"Are you sure you're OK with this?" Poe asks.

"He was always your droid," Rey says. "I was just looking after him for a while."

BB-8 chirps, opining that he had been under the impression that Poe had asked him to look after Rey, rather than the other way around.

"And a very good job you did too," Rey says.

BB-8 asks Rey directly if she will be all right.

Rey looks across at Zorii, who is staring at the desert rushing past. Or at least, she seems to be -- it's impossible to tell the direction of her gaze with her helmet obscuring her face. It's entirely possible that Zorii's looking straight at her, out of the corner of her eye. The longer she looks, in fact, the more convinced Rey becomes that that's exactly what's going on.

"Yes," Rey says. "I will be."

* * *

The elevator ride back up is far less eventful than the one down. Zorii seems unbothered by Poe's presence, swapping stories with him about their spice running days that may or may not be true. But Rey spends the whole time wondering whether he can tell what's happened between them.

She gets her answer only at the very last moment, when Poe is climbing into the cockpit of his X-wing. He turns back. BB-8, already installed in the astromech slot, turns his optical sensor towards them at the same time.

"Watch out," Poe says. "She'll break your heart."

Zorii and Rey look at him, then at each other, then back at Poe, as the transparisteel canopy lowers over him. He gives them a half-wave, half-salute, accompanied by an exaggerated wink.

They watch him take off in silence, the way he then has to nudge out of the cavern at manoeuvring speed almost an anti-climax compared to a take-off in planetary atmosphere. Rey knows that she'll see him -- and BB-8 -- again, but she still feels a moment of disconnection. But then, there is a new connection, isn't there? Albeit one that Poe has just tried to imply is at least mildly doomed.

"Wait," Rey says. "Which one of us do you think he was talking to?"

"I'm pretty sure it was me," Zorii says. "He knows you've got your big Jedi destiny, even if you haven't figured it all out just yet. A mere mortal like me can't expect to keep up with you."

"No, I'm pretty sure he was talking to me. You are ... you, after all."

"I'm going to ignore that," Zorii says. "But Poe was definitely talking to me." She stops for a moment. "Just to be clear, you falling to the Dark Side would break my heart, along with half the galaxy."

"If there's any heartbreaking going on, it's not going to me doing it."

"Oh," Zorii says. "Is that a promise?"

Rey takes her hand. "It is if you want it to be."


End file.
